


Desire

by Catfishers



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, One Shot, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 19:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11168637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catfishers/pseuds/Catfishers
Summary: Lavellan's dreams see her searching for her lost love, but there are others hunting in the Fade.





	Desire

Danan awoke within the Fade, her stomach twisting with apprehension. She’d visited the Fade before the incident at the conclave of course, but never so often as she did now. It had been months since her sleeping mind had yielded her to normal dreams and her subconscious yearning forced her into night after night spent endlessly searching the dreamscape. Night after night spent traversing the fade, always just a few steps behind him. So it had been ever since-

No. Best not to think of that. Not here. Not when so many were waiting, hungry and eager to taste of her grief. _I will never forget you…_

That she was in some fade reconstruction of Crestwood did not surprise her. It always started here. The sight of the moonlight reflected in the rippling pool no longer made her stomach lurch. Her heart did not stutter at the shapes that moved beyond the fog, just outside of her vision. She no longer needed to doubt that she was loved, but there was no comfort in the thought, only an ever-present ache that churned a restless anxiety.

The place sang with familiar emptiness. Still, she dared not linger. The denizens of the Fade had grown accustomed to her nightly visits and it would not be long before they sought her out. 

She’d feel them before she saw them; a cool finger of apprehension pressed lightly to the back of her neck, or a sick flutter in her gut as she crossed a threshold. Sometimes she’d give in to fear and her terror would send her crashing through the dreamscape, heedless of both memory and nightmare, pursued by demons, wraiths, … or worse. Only one thing remained a constant; they always came for her. Her silent search, her heart’s call, it called to demons and curious spirits alike.

She moved to brush a hair from her face, again forgetting the absent limb. Her chest ached with a different kind of loss. It had been months and still she had not adjusted.

She kept her emotions in check as she walked from the grove, her steps brisk but not hurried, willing the Fade to allow her swift passage from the place. She did not look back. Tonight, she promised herself, she would catch him.

The cave leading to Glenmorran Mine shifted and turned with her step, the smooth damp walls giving way to rough towering stone. Light shafted down from above her, and she stepped from a ravine to find herself among the colossal trees of the Emerald Graves. Dream or no, the brilliant beams of sunlight filtering through the leaves warmed her face where they fell, banishing the cool of the Crestwood grove.

Danan inhaled deeply, drinking in the heady scent of earth, grass, and laurel that made her head feel light and her heart twist beneath her ribs. They’d spent so much time here, the two of them, and it seemed to her as if the scent of the woods had become a fixed part of her memories of him. They’d walked among the ruins by day, quiet and close, his tone poetic as he told her of the past wonders he had glimpsed there in his dreamings. Of course she knew now that the things he had spoken of were not truly remnants of a lost world caught forever in the twisting mists of the fade. They were his memories, memories of a world he had loved and destroyed. _You change everything._

Nights in the forest had brought stolen kisses, both tender and demanding by turns. Their heated sighs were lost to the rush of the breeze through the trees. The thought of those moments, so fleeting _,_ made her chest ache. They had woven their tale across nations, every path, village, and forest bore the sting of brushing fingers and crashing lips. _Ar lath ma…_

Often she sensed him near, felt a burning longing keening for her across the Fade. Always strongest in those places where her memories were most raw, where they’d pressed themselves together whispering oaths of eternities she’d dared expect they would one day share. Sometimes she saw him, watching her from a distance so endless she could never hope to cross it. But still she tried.

A chill breeze danced across her skin, it’s passage leaving both leaf and grass untouched. She shivered, the faint scent of sulphur wrinkling her nose. Drawn by the yearning tenor of her thoughts, they had come. Danan steeled herself and set forth through the ancient trees, fingers crooked for casting. Her heart fluttered unpleasantly with fear and… anticipation?

Her wayward emotions exerted a will of their own upon the lush woods, and as she hastened through the living columns, dusk came to the Graves. Shadows lengthened, grasping out like claws towards her rushing feet. She could feel it now, the panic, rising like bile in her throat. She bit down a ragged cry of irrational fear. She knew this as false terror, a trick of wills forced upon her by a ravenous spirit. Rationally she knew. But still she reacted like a deer before a hunting arrow, all panic and recklessness. She broke into a sprint.

The darkness became heavy walls around her, the forest no longer truly a forest, but a nightmare manifestation of her memories and fear. A wolf howled mournfully in the distance and her heart lurched. Her throat tightened as she was struck by a wave of grief and irrational hope.

Could he get here before the demon caught her? Would he try? She was in danger now, she knew, this demon was stronger than the others she had encountered, and she found herself unable to escape from the cloying mist of terror it exuded. She should wake, that would be the easiest way, the safest. Wake up. _Wake up…_

A branch cracked behind her. She gasped and whirled. Then the ground gave way, and she was falling, her shriek lost to the void.

 ~

_‘It would seem I have a guest.’_

Stone, cold beneath her. No breeze, no trees, no pursuit. It was quiet, save for the voice. Her head spun, an unpleasant feeling of drunkenness she couldn’t shake. 

She kept her eyes closed.

_‘You seem so unhappy, da’len.’_

_No_. She was fine. _She is fine, she is fine, she is fine._ She’d told herself this too many times over the last few months to forget it now. And even with the cold of the floor biting into her knees and the sharp taste of blood on her lips, she repeated it. _Fine, fine, fine._  

_‘I can see your heart. You need not lie to me.’_

Her heart _. He holds her like she is fleeting and precious and barely real. Ar lath ma, vhenan._

Her chest constricted, air fleeing her lungs. No. He’s gone. Gone where she can’t follow. And if she couldn’t find him, couldn’t stop him… Lights danced across the lids of her eyes and she felt bile rise in her throat. 

_‘It doesn’t have to be that way, emm’asha. I want you to be happy. I can make it right.’_

The voice wound through her thoughts like alcohol, teasing her, dazing her.

Isn’t that what she wanted? She reeled _. He vanishes through the mirror, his kiss still lingering on her lips, sad and sweet and final._

‘No,’ she whispered, sounding pleading and pathetic even to her own ears. ‘Not like this.’

‘ _Sweetling_ , _I know what it is you search for. You deserve happiness. You deserve to have your desire.’_

Fingers brushed her skin, cupping her cheek, and her eyes flew open before she could stop them. She looked up, and he was just as she remembered. _More_ than she remembered. Illuminated in the soft light of the rotunda, he was made real with all the tiny details she could not admit to herself she was forgetting.

His stormy eyes were filled with concern, and she felt fleetingly angry with herself for making him worry so. 

No. Not right. This wasn’t right. 

His brows furrowed. ‘I’ve come back, vhenan,’ his familiar lilting voice was gentle and warm, banishing the last frigid fingers of fear from her spine. She turned her face into his palm. She’d missed this. Oh, how she’d missed this.

‘I could not lose you,’ he whispered. ‘I was wrong to try and play god...’ His eyes were full of love, and free of reservation as they’d never been before. 

He reached down and wrapped his slender fingers around hers, pulling her to her feet. They were so close, she could feel the heat of his body seeking hers. He leaned forward, the space between them vanishing as he planted a soft kiss against her lips, lingering and hesitant and sweet. 

But she felt only a stab of fleeting sorrow. Her heart, usually so traitorously telling, did not race. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He pulled her close, deepening the kiss, and she felt that she was suffocating. Her thoughts drifted like smoke, growing ever more elusive as she tried to hold them.

No, _no_! _Please don’t do this, Var lath vir suledin. And he is passing through the looking glass, his kiss fading on her lips as her hopes die in her heart_ … _I will never forget you._

He walks the Din’anshiral _._ She had to save him, stop him. And yet…

She felt her mouth move against his in response to his hunger. Heat swept through her. She raised a hand to push him away, but it only clutched feebly at his shirt as she drowned in the taste of his lips and the heady scent of his skin. Laurel, he smelled like laurel. It was everything she remembered. More than she remembered.

Her knees weakened and she felt herself begin to slump. She was so tired. She would have fallen, if not for his arms holding her. 

Trapping her. 

No. Not like this. _Not like this._  

His hand was firm at the small of her back, pressing her hips flush against his. A traitorous sigh escaped her lips as her mind struggled against cloying fog, grasping for something, anything.

_In another world…_

She clutched at the words. Why not this one. Why not? It felt so real. So close. It could be close enough. It could be what she wanted… she felt herself hook an arm around his neck, melting against him. The memory of her grief and her mission slipped away until she could remember only his kiss. No pain, no loss, no hurt. No world to save… Just this.

She could be content.

The Fade flared around them, a burst of combined triumph and rage and the air sang with a savage animalistic growling. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a dark blur. Pain, sharp and raw blossomed along her forearm and she gasped. The rhythm of the kiss faltered, lips separating for just a moment before crashing back together. But it was enough, he’d done enough. She’d caught a breath, the air setting her lungs afire, the sharpness of the sensation matching the stark ache of her arm. Her heart stuttered in her chest. 

This thing was not the man she loved. For all that her heart cried out for him, for all that her skin craved his, this was not him. She couldn’t pretend. People were relying on her; the _world_ was relying on her. She couldn’t succumb.

As if sensing her hesitance, the thing that looked like Solas held her even more tightly, crushing the air from her lungs. Panic blossomed in her chest. It would devour her. The thing pulled away from her mouth, trailing hot kisses down her neck to the hollow of her throat and she drew a ragged breath as its lips pressed urgently against her fear-quickened pulse. It was too late to struggle now, she’d never break free. She’d given it too much, wanted too fiercely, and her desire had lent it immeasurable strength. She forced herself to relax, to ease into the embrace and pretend nothing was amiss even as her mind raced.

Her free hand fumbled for her belt-knife, eyes stinging with tears the thing failed to notice as it slanted its mouth against hers again. _Ir abelas, vhenan._ She brought her hand between the press of their bodies, the silverite bitingly cold. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._  

She closed her eyes. And twisted the knife. Her sob was soft against familiar lips as she felt the blade slide neatly between his ribs. _Forgive me._

He gasped, and she knew the sound of this last ragged exhale would haunt her. It always did; too much, too real, too _likely._

Then he slipped away, fingers clawing against her clothes as he fell into the dark, taking with him the light and warmth of the rotunda. She drew in a heaving breath. The knife fell from her fingers to drop silently into the void.

‘S _uch games you play, da’len,’_ the desire demon’s sibilant chuckle echoed in the emptiness, filled with the dangerous promise of teeth and hunger. ‘ _Not to worry, there’s always tomorrow night. I can be patient. And perhaps one day your absent lover will not be there to save you…’_

 ~

She woke with a hoarse gasp, clammy with sweat and tangled in bed-clothes. Her room dark and achingly empty, save for the chill of the mountain air. Her arm still stung, and she raised it in the gloom to find four long gashes. Claw marks. She’d heal them later, when the light of dawn finally slanted through her windows to chase the exhaustion away. When she didn’t need the sting of them to keep her from slipping into sleep again. Tonight had been close. She’d almost caught him… and almost lost herself.

She drew her knees up to her chest and sobbed into them, venting her frustration, trusting in the thick stone walls to keep her secrets. At least for one more night.


End file.
